This invention relates to a method and apparatus for changing the gearing in the printer section of a cigarette rod making machine. More specifically, this invention relates to a method and apparatus to facilitate rotating the printer die in the printer section of a cigarette rod making machine in either a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction without disassembling the printer gearing.
Most cigarette making machines include a printer for applying a brand name or other indicia to cigarette paper at regular intervals so that when cigarettes are made, the printing will appear at the same location on each cigarette. The cigarette paper is conventionally a paper web that starts on a supply roll and is fed through a conventional splice unit to a paper reservoir. From the reservoir, the cigarette paper is fed through the printer to the garniture and then on to the part of the making machine that wraps and seals the paper around a tobacco rod.
During its passage through the printer, the cigarette paper is threaded though a number of rollers and guide plates. The cigarette paper is typically pulled through the printer by one or more of these rollers. The rollers that pull the cigarette paper through the printer are driven by a linkage to the main motor of the cigarette making machine. The rollers that are not driven are typically free spinning and rotate only when the cigarette paper contacts them. Two rollers in the printer that are typically driven are the printer die roller and the drag roller. These two rollers are linked to the main motor of the cigarette making machine by a series of gears in the gear box of the printer.
The desired brand name or other indicia is typically embossed on the printer die. Printing is accomplished by employing a pressure contact between a printer die and an adjacent roller sometimes called the compression roller, such that when the paper passes between the printer die and the compression roller, the desired indicia embossed on the printer die is printed on the paper.
Conventionally, the same cigarette making machine is used to make several different brands of cigarettes. This requires a change-over from one printer die to another that has different embossing. It also sometimes requires changing the gearing used to drive the printer die. For example, different ratio gearing may be necessary to drive the printer die at a different speed than the drag roller for different cigarette lengths. Also, different brands may have printing on different sides of the cigarette paper. This change-over requires that the direction of rotation of the printer die (and corresponding paper threading) be changed. For example, some cigarette brands have only an identification number or symbol printed on the inside of the cigarette paper, which is not visible to the consumer. In a later process, tipping paper including the brand name or other indicia visible to the consumer is added to the cigarette.
Currently, to change-over the gear train linking the printer die to the main motor, an operator must disassemble the gear train, change the gearing in the gear train, and then reassemble the gear train. Disassembly causes substantial down time in the cigarette making process while an employee manually disassembles the making machine's printer gear box, taking forty-five minutes or longer. Also, such manual disassembly risks mismatching oil-laden gear box parts during reassembly. Currently, change-over is very costly in terms of both labor and lost cigarette production capacity.
This invention greatly reduces the time it takes to change over the printer in a cigarette making machine. The invention provides a pivotable gear train in the printer gear box between gear connected to the printer die and gear connected to the main motor of the cigarette making machine, called the input gear. With the pivotable gear train, disassembly of the gear train in the printer gear box is no longer necessary.